This demonstrates William's handwriting and detailed drawings. He knows he's only allowed to throw balls. 🙂

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I am amazed by how much and how quickly William is learning in school this year. He is now six years old and in full-day Kindergarten. His private school’s curriculum is a year ahead of public schools. So while William is an older Kindergartner (by design), he is learning first-grade academics. He’s a very confident reader and is beginning to explore multiplication in math. Art will always be his favorite, but he also loves Spanish and playing the recorder in music.

This shows what William is learning in math. Adding 3 numbers!

A couple incidents this week demonstrated his academic success. One night, while my husband was reading a chapter book to him before bed, William corrected my husband’s pronunciation of a name while reading over his shoulder.

And just the other day, while discussing a spelling app I had installed on my phone, I mentioned that the words were pretty easy (cat, bird, ship). He said, “I can spell hard words like ‘information.’” He proceeded to spell the word and got it right until the tricky “tion” part.

I attribute William’s strength in learning in part to the way we have parented him. Despite the struggles we’ve had with his sensory issues, he does really well in school. His teacher says that William is always diligent with his work and has no trouble concentrating on the task at hand.

His handwriting is pretty advanced for his age. Not bad for a Kindergartner!

There are several character traits that I strive to instill in my kids, and they work well both at home and at school:

Respect for authority

Listening and attentiveness

Concentration

Thriving in a structured environment

Independence in play and in schoolwork

High standards for himself and his work

Appropriate social skills

This last trait was put to the test four days ago when a classmate punched William in the face. This boy was frustrated that William wouldn’t do what he wanted and rather than speak to him about his frustrations, he lashed out in aggression. As a mom, I am just appalled that this would even happen in school, and my immediate reaction was to protect my baby from the outside world.

But his response to the incident tells me that he knows very well how to behave among friends. Not only did he not hit back or scream or even cry, but he shrugged it off and walked away. Later, he told me that it hurt and that he was sad that his friend would hurt him. The boy was disciplined appropriately (sent home from school), which I take heart in. But even more encouraging to me than the school’s reaction was William’s response.

Thanks to all that I have learned from the Ezzos, I feel confident in William’s abilities in school and among friends. These skills not only help him in Kindergarten, but I’m confident they will inspire strength in learning throughout his many school years to come.

One response to “Tuesday Triumphs: Strength in learning”

That is good handwriting for a kindergartner! Handwriting is definitely one of those subjects where diligence pays off. And wow, he handled that kid’s hitting exactly as he should have, I’ll bet he rarely or never gets bullied in school when he’s older if he stays cool under pressure like that.

Let’s see, our big triumph this past week was that Tobias ate his vegetables! I don’t know how it happened but somehow picky eating habits have been creeping up on us this past year and I realized he hadn’t actually eaten a vegetable in months! So we sat down and talked about how vegetables make us healthy and keep our tummy feeling good and I put my foot down that he must at least try everything on his plate. It took awhile but he ended up trying his corn and potatoes and ate them all, go figure! Now onto more difficult veggies like green beans and carrots 😉